Pancit Malabon

Ingredients
½         kilo       miki (white, thick, and round noodles)
2/3       cup       coarsely founded sitsaron baboy
2/3       cup       flaked fish meat (tinapa)
½         kilo       pork fat (cubed)
¼         kilo       squid (adobo)
½         kilo       talaba (Filipino oyster) (adobo)
2                      eggs, hardboiled
5-6      cloves   garlic, minced
3         tbsp      atchuete seeds (anato seeds)
                         salt to taste
Procedure
1.    Boil water with a little salt. Drop miki. Cook until tender. Drain. Set aside.
2.    Soak atchuete seeds in ½ cup hot water. Extract color.
3.    Add colored water to pork fat, cook until water dries. Stir until oil comes out and pork becomes sitsaron. Set aside sitsaron.
4.    Sauté garlic in atchuete oil. Transfer oil with garlic in a small bowl. Set aside.
5.    Put cooked noodles on a plate. Sprinkle fried garlic with oil and arrange all ingredients on top of noodles. Garnish with slices of boiled egg.
6.    Serve with puto.

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Vampires Be Gone Spaghetti

Ingredients:

10 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
Several pinches of hot red pepper flakes
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, or as desired
1 pound spaghetti
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 head of broccoli, broken into bite-size florets
Freshly grated Parmesan, or other grating cheese

Instructions:

Boil water and add noodles to cook as usual, except about half way through cooking add the broccoli and let the noodles and broccoli finish cooking at the same time.  Drain, but reserve about half the cooking water for later.  Warm approximately half of the garlic with the pepper flakes in the olive oil over medium heat (turn on the vent and open the kitchen window or you'll be crying in your spaghetti!)  Toss the pasta and broccoli with the garlic/chile oil and add the remaining garlic to the mix and continue to toss to coat. Add a few spoonfuls of that reserved water and keep tossing, add more water as needed.  Kind of have to eyeball it until it's well coated and tossed to your liking.  Serve up and sprinkle with grated cheese.  There will be no fear of vampires bothering you after this dinner!

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20 Minute Tuna Casserole

Ingredients:
8 ounces of rotini pasta
2 cans of cream of mushroom soup
12 ounces of white albacore tuna in water
3 cups of shredded white cheddar cheese
1 cup of bread crumbs

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Prepare pasta according to the box directions. While it's boiling, mix together the soup, tuna, and 2 cups of cheese. Drain pasta and pour into a 9" x 13" baking dish. Add the tuna mixture and blend with the pasta. Cover with the rest of the cheese and top with the breadcrumbs. Slide into the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Serve with buttery crackers.

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Baked Sausage & Chicken Pasta

Ingredients:
250       grams         Elbow Macaroni, cooked
2          tbsp            olive oil
2          cloves         garlic, minced
1          pc               medium onion, chopped
100      grams          ground chicken
1          pc(80g)       Italian sausage, coarsely chopped or diced
1         pouch(250g) Sweet Style spaghetti sauce
1/4      cup              chicken stock or water
1/2      cup              sliced black pitted olives
1         cup              grated quickmelt cheese
1         pack(240g)   cottage cheese

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 3500F. Sauté  garlic and onion in olive oil. Add chicken and cook for 1 minute. Add Italian sausage. Cook for another minute.
2. Add spaghetti sauce, chicken stock, olives, 1/4 tsp iodized fine salt (or 3/4 tsp iodized rock salt). Simmer for 5 minutes. Set aside.
3. Mix cooked macaroni with a third of the sauce. Place half of macaroni mixture in a lightly greased 8" x 11" pan. Spread half of remaining sauce and half of cheese. Repeat procedure.
4. Bake in oven for 10 minutes or until cheese melts.
5. Makes 8 servings.         

          

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A Pasta Meal in a Flash, Quick and Easy Recipes

Pasta meals are pretty easy to cook. The pasta itself just needs to be placed in boiling water and can be cooked in 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the type of pasta of course. And while the pasta is boiling you can already prepare your desired sauce, whether it may be tomato based, pesto or cream based, you can be finished in now time. You can have a pasta meal in a flash, provided you know what you’re doing.

To those experienced in the kitchen, this kind of meal is easy to make. But to the novices might still find pasta a little daunting or troublesome. One thing that you should watch out when cooking pasta is the noodles. You need to test every now and then to see if the noodles are done. The pasta cooks pretty quickly and leaving it too long can result to soggy noodles.

Avoid placing the pasta when the water is not yet boiling. This will help prevent the pasta from becoming all mushy, soft and sticky. Also, keep the water at a boil at all times. You can help make the pasta firmer if you add salt into the boiling water. Note that you should not cover the pot when you already placed the pasta. When the pasta is done, take it off the boiling water. The pasta will continue to cook if you leave it there. With that, one half of your pasta meal is done. The other half would be the sauce.

The good thing about pasta is having several choices for sauces. Actually, at some point you will be stomped on what kind of sauce to make due to the varieties. If you’re a pasta person then having a couple of sauces stored in your refrigerator would be the best ways to go. If you have pesto, you can use that to sauce your pasta. Add additional garlic, some mushrooms or even Italian sausages and topped with cheese and you can have a good meal.

Bottled or canned sun-dried tomatoes can go well with pasta. I always try to have some sun-dried tomatoes ready since you can just pour it over your pasta and voila! A tomato based pasta without the traditional tomato sauce and pastes. Top with grated cheese and partnered with bread and you can have a fulfilling meal in no time.

If you want a cream-based sauce, just prepare some sliced olives, cream, oregano and grated cheese. Mix the cream, olives and oregano together with your pasta and finish off with grated cheese on top. A simple cream-based pasta but can be quite joyous to the palette.

Olive oil is also a staple sauce for pasta and can be quite easy to use as well. You can mix olive oil with canned seafood or slices of meat or sausages to create a sauce for your pasta. You can add basil for flavor and don’t forget the grated cheese. If you want to experiment, try adding spicy flavored meat or canned seafood. Spicy pasta may not be for everyone but still a good dish in my account.

A pasta meal in a flash is really just that. In a span of 15 to 20 minutes you would have already prepared a good, hearty meal of pasta in either tomato, cream or olive-based sauce. It is a quick meal that I personally won’t get tire off.

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